money," said Alice.
"She says it's not only the material in them, but the ideas. Each
costume is a study, like a picture. 'I pay for the creative genius of
the artist,' she said to me--'for his ability to catch my ideas and
apply them to my personality--my complexion and hair and eyes.
Sometimes I design my own costumes, and so I know what hard work it
is!'"

Mrs. Landis came from one of New York's oldest families, and she was
wealthy in her own right; she had a palace on Fifth Avenue, and now
that she had turned her husband out, she had nothing at all to put in
it except her clothes. Alice told about the places in which she kept
them--it was like a museum! There was a gown-room, made dust-proof, of
polished hardwood, and with tier upon tier of long poles running
across, and padded skirt-supporters hanging from them. Everywhere there
was order and system--each skirt was numbered, and in a
chiffonier-drawer of the same number you would find the waist--and so
on with hats and stockings and gloves and shoes and parasols. There was
a row of closets, having shelves piled up with dainty lace-trimmed and
beribboned lingerie; there were two closets full of hats and three of
shoes. "When she went West," said Alice, "one of her maids counted, and
found that she had over four hundred pairs! And she actually has a
cabinet with a card-catalogue to keep track of them. And all the
shelves are lined with perfumed silk sachets, and she has tiny sachets
sewed in every skirt and waist; and she has her own private
perfume--she gave me some. She calls it Occur de Jeannette, and she
says she designed it herself, and had it patented!"

And then Alice went on to describe the maid's work-room, which was also
of polished hardwood, and dust-proof, and had a balcony for brushing
clothes, and wires upon which to hang them, and hot and cold water, and
a big ironing-table and an electric stove. "But there can't be much
work to do," laughed the girl, "for she never wears a gown more than
two or three times. Just think of paying several thousand dollars for a
costume, and giving it to your poor relations after you have worn it
only twice! And the worst of it is that Mrs. Landis says it's all
nothing unusual; you'll find such arrangements in every home of people
who are socially prominent. She says there are women who boast of never
appearing twice in the same gown, and there's one dreadful personage in
Boston who wears each costume once, and then ha